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Ashi Studio is a Paris-based couture house founded in 2007 by Saudi Arabian designer Mohammed Ashi. Known for sculptural silhouettes, exacting handwork and a visual language that moves between romanticism and architectural restraint, the maison creates made-to-measure fashion in which fabric is treated almost as a building material. Corsetry, controlled volume, elongated trains and carefully engineered lines allow its garments to alter the perceived shape of the body rather than simply follow it. The result is couture that feels dramatic, contemporary and unmistakably authored.
Mohammed Ashi was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. As a teenager, he moved to Burlington, Vermont, where his exposure to fine art encouraged him to think more seriously about visual expression. Fashion gradually became the medium through which he felt able to communicate ideas that were difficult to resolve through conventional art alone.
Public accounts of Ashi’s education contain some inconsistencies, particularly regarding dates. What is reliably established is that he studied marketing in the United States before training in fashion at ESMOD in Paris. The combination gave him an understanding of both creative practice and the commercial realities involved in building an independent design house.
After his studies, Ashi gained experience at Givenchy and Elie Saab. The Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode identifies these two houses as important stages in his professional development, exposing him to couture construction, specialist atelier practices and the organisational demands of an international luxury business.
The late Franca Sozzani, then editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia, was also influential in expanding Ashi’s international network. Ashi has recalled that Sozzani noticed his work early, introduced him to figures in the European and American fashion industries and helped him establish valuable professional contacts. His participation in the Vogue Dubai Fashion Experience in 2013 further strengthened the house’s visibility outside its existing private-client circle.
Mohammed Ashi established his house in 2007. The Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode describes the company as having been founded in Saudi Arabia, while a detailed 2023 business case records that Ashi began his operational activity in Lebanon before later relocating to France. The most accurate interpretation is that Ashi Studio is a Saudi-founded maison whose early atelier and business development were closely connected to Beirut.
Beirut offered an established culture of couture dressmaking, with access to embroiderers, seamstresses, pattern cutters and craftspeople experienced in producing elaborate made-to-measure garments. From this environment, Ashi built a business centred on personal commissions rather than mass production.
According to a case study published by Prince Mohammed Bin Salman College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Ashi launched the company with an investment of approximately €56,000, equivalent to about $60,000 at the time, and an initial team of three employees. The same study identifies him as the sole owner of the business and states that its growth was financed largely by reinvesting profits. These figures originated from company information supplied for the study and should therefore be understood as historical, company-attributed data rather than independently audited accounts.
The house moved its atelier to Paris in 2018. This placed Ashi Studio closer to France’s couture institutions, specialist suppliers, international fashion media and the craftspeople whose work supports the Parisian couture ecosystem. It also allowed the maison to develop within the city most closely associated with the formal traditions of haute couture.
Paris did not replace the different cultural environments that had shaped the brand. Ashi Studio developed through a dialogue between Mohammed Ashi’s Saudi identity, Beirut’s atelier knowledge and the structures of French couture. That combination remains central to the house’s international character.
Independence is one of the most important aspects of Ashi Studio’s history. Unlike houses owned by large luxury groups, the maison developed under the direct ownership of its founder. Its early growth was built around made-to-measure orders, bridal commissions, ceremonial dressing and long-term relationships with private clients.
The 2023 business-school case reported that the company had expanded to approximately 120 employees across operations in Paris, Dubai, Lugano and Riyadh. It also recorded around 2,000 clients by the end of 2022. Revenue was reported at €9 million in 2019 and approximately €11 million in 2022, with a margin of around 30 per cent. Because the case identifies Ashi Studio itself as the source of these numbers, they are best presented as a historical picture of the company at that particular stage rather than as current financial statements.
This model reflects the realities of couture. A made-to-measure garment may require repeated fittings, complex internal construction and the work of several specialists. Growth cannot be measured solely through the number of pieces produced. Client trust, technical consistency and the ability to preserve an individual design language are equally important.
Ashi Studio strengthened its presence in Saudi Arabia by opening a boutique in Riyadh’s Via Riyadh luxury destination. The development gave the house a permanent client-facing location in a market that had supported it through private commissions for many years. By 2024, the Financial Times described the company as operating a Riyadh boutique alongside a private salon in Paris.
Ashi Studio’s most recognisable quality is its command of form. The house repeatedly works beyond the body’s natural outline, creating curved shoulders, defined waists, sculpted hips, raised collars, wing-like sleeves and trains whose movement is carefully controlled.
Corsetry often provides the hidden foundation. It allows light materials to appear suspended, stabilises exaggerated proportions and gives softer drapery a clear relationship to the body. A silhouette may initially appear spontaneous, but its apparent ease is usually supported by disciplined internal engineering.
The maison describes Mohammed Ashi as a “master of matter” and a “sculptor of space.” Although this is the house’s own language, it accurately identifies the importance of volume and material behaviour in his practice. Fabric is folded, stretched, layered, gathered and reinforced until it acquires an almost architectural presence.
Ashi’s work is not defined by volume alone. Its power frequently comes from contrast. Transparent fabric may be placed against a rigid bodice. Restrained tailoring may be interrupted by a monumental sleeve. Elaborate embroidery can appear within an otherwise pure, monochromatic line. The house characterises its identity as a meeting of baroque and minimalist currents: ornament and restraint held in deliberate balance.
This tension allows the clothes to remain theatrical without losing precision. Even Ashi Studio’s most elaborate gowns are organised around a clear structure. Decoration supports the silhouette rather than obscuring it.
Mohammed Ashi has described the emotional world of his work as one of “dark romance.” The phrase helps explain the recurring combination of beauty, mystery, historical memory and transformation found across his collections.
Rather than treating couture as immaculate glamour alone, Ashi often explores surfaces that appear aged, eroded, painted, weathered or recovered from another period. Materials can resemble stone, metal, armour or architectural fragments. This interest in imperfection brings emotional depth to garments that remain exceptionally controlled in construction.
Traditional couture skills are fundamental to the effect. Embroidery, hand-finishing, corsetry, feather work, draping and specialist textile treatments are used alongside less conventional artistic practices. During the Spring/Summer 2026 couture season, for example, Ashi Studio collaborated with practitioners from art and film as well as established couture specialists. The Fédération reported that one corseted work incorporating woven human hair required approximately 600 hours, while keys and death’s-head moths appeared as embroidered motifs. These details belonged to that documented collection and should not be interpreted as routine materials used throughout the house’s output.
Ashi Studio’s approach therefore extends beyond embellishment for its own sake. Materials are selected and manipulated to develop atmosphere, character and movement. The garment becomes not only an object to be worn but a means of creating a particular emotional presence.
In July 2023, Ashi Studio reached a defining institutional milestone when it was invited to present as a guest house on the official Paris Haute Couture Week calendar. Mohammed Ashi became the first designer from the Gulf region to receive this invitation.
The distinction between a guest house and a permanent member is important. Ashi Studio is listed by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode as a Guest Member, or Guest House, of the couture calendar. This represents official participation in Haute Couture Week but is not the same category as permanent membership of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture.
Its debut collection on the official calendar, The Essence, was presented at the Théâtre du Châtelet. Inspired by the atmosphere of Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume, the collection examined ideas of seduction, sensation and the extraction of beauty. Sculpted necklines, transparent layers, dramatic sleeves and forms recalling perfume vessels translated an invisible sensory subject into physical silhouettes.
The invitation was significant both professionally and culturally. It recognised a business developed through years of private couture practice while widening the geographical representation of designers participating in Paris’s most selective fashion platform.
The house had established many of its signatures before joining the official calendar. Its Spring/Summer 2023 collection, Moonlight and Dust, was presented at the Palais de Tokyo in a darkened setting illuminated to evoke moonlight. The production’s restrained environment focused attention on pale surfaces, embroidery and sculptural eveningwear.
With The Essence in 2023, those familiar codes gained new institutional visibility. Rather than abandoning the language that had built the house, Ashi refined it for an audience that included the international couture establishment.
Subsequent collections have continued to examine the relationship between history and the present. Ashi frequently begins with cultural, literary or artistic references, but he does not simply reproduce their original forms. They are filtered through the house’s vocabulary of corsetry, amplified proportion, controlled drapery and handmade surface work.
The Spring/Summer 2026 collection demonstrated the breadth of this method. Historical mourning customs, symbolic objects and unconventional artistic collaborations were transformed through modern couture construction. The Fédération described Ashi’s approach as being fascinated by the past while remaining firmly grounded in the present.
This ability to translate rather than imitate is central to the maison. References become starting points for form, texture and mood rather than costume reproductions.
Mohammed Ashi’s international career holds particular importance within the continuing development of Saudi Arabia’s fashion sector. The Saudi Fashion Commission was established in 2020 to support the country’s fashion ecosystem, develop professional skills and create greater opportunities for designers and businesses.
Ashi has contributed to this development as a mentor and adviser. The Fédération has identified his advisory relationship with the Fashion Commission, while the 2023 business case records his contribution to the Saudi 100 Brands initiative. The programme was created to provide Saudi designers and companies with mentorship, industry knowledge and international exposure.
His influence, however, predates this institutional role. Ashi Studio had already developed a global private clientele and international reputation over many years. His contribution to Saudi fashion therefore rests not only on symbolic visibility but on practical experience in building an independent couture company across several markets.
His place on the Paris couture calendar has further demonstrated that Saudi identity and international couture practice need not be positioned as opposites. Ashi’s work participates in the technical language of Paris while remaining connected to the designer’s own cultural history.
In 2024, Riyadh Air selected Mohammed Ashi to design fashion for its cabin crew and other customer-facing employees. The collaboration required the designer to apply his visual vocabulary to clothing governed by movement, operational requirements and a consistent corporate identity.
The design concepts were unveiled in Paris during Haute Couture Week in June 2024. They drew on the polished glamour associated with the golden age of aviation, particularly the tailored airline imagery of the mid-20th century. Dresses, coats, trouser suits, hats, footwear and accessories were developed as a coordinated wardrobe rather than as a single standardised outfit.
Amethyst became the defining colour, linking the clothing to Riyadh Air’s broader visual identity. Ashi described the shade as elegant, powerful and noticeable. The airline presented the project as “cabin crew fashion,” signalling its intention to use dress as a prominent part of the passenger’s first encounter with the brand.
For Ashi Studio, the project demonstrated that couture thinking can be adapted beyond ceremonial clothing. Proportion, recognisability and precise tailoring remained important, but they were directed towards professional performance and everyday functionality.
Celebrity dressing has introduced Ashi Studio’s work to audiences beyond private couture clients. The house’s sculptural garments are particularly effective in environments where silhouette must communicate immediately, including red carpets, performances, magazine editorials and film promotions.
Among the public figures documented in Ashi Studio are Beyoncé, Cardi B, Zendaya, Penélope Cruz, Sonam Kapoor and Queen Rania of Jordan. Cardi B’s white gown at the 2018 Grammy Awards became an especially visible early moment for the house, its shell-like form demonstrating Ashi’s ability to produce a strong image without sacrificing couture workmanship.
The maison’s appeal to performers is understandable. Ashi does not merely dress the existing outline of a person. His garments help construct a new visual character through volume, gesture and controlled transformation.
At the 2026 Met Gala, Emily Blunt wore a custom black Ashi Studio look composed of a corseted, tasselled upper section and tailored trousers. It was paired with a Mikimoto pearl-and-diamond body jewel valued at approximately $500,000. The design allowed clothing and jewellery to function as one composition in response to the evening’s “Fashion Is Art” dress code. Sabine Getty also appeared in Ashi Studio, wearing a surreal, painterly corseted design.
These appearances are the house’s most visible public expression, but they represent only part of its activity. Private commissions, bridal orders and made-to-measure relationships remain fundamental to the couture business behind the images.
Ashi Studio’s importance lies in more than dramatic gowns or celebrity recognition. The house represents a model of modern couture that is international without becoming culturally anonymous. It combines Saudi authorship, Beirut atelier experience, Parisian institutional recognition and a worldwide private clientele.
Its creative identity is built on productive oppositions: baroque detail and minimalist line, fragility and structure, history and modernity, darkness and refinement. These contrasts give the clothes a distinctive emotional charge while maintaining technical clarity.
Independent ownership has allowed Mohammed Ashi to protect this identity over a long period. The maison has expanded through private clients, international presentations, a Riyadh retail presence and carefully chosen collaborations rather than through high-volume production.
At the heart of the business remains the atelier. Ashi Studio’s public images may be immediate, but their creation depends on a slower sequence of drawing, pattern cutting, construction, embroidery, fitting and revision. This investment of time is central to the house’s understanding of luxury.
In an industry increasingly shaped by speed and constant visibility, Ashi Studio makes a persuasive case for couture as an art of concentration. Its garments acquire meaning through the dialogue between imagination and labour: an idea drawn on paper, given structure by a corset, shaped by hand and ultimately transformed into a physical presence around the wearer.
Ashi Studio. (n.d.). Our maison. Ashi Studio. (Ashi Studio –)
Chitrakorn, K. (2024, June 27). Saudi Arabia star designer Mohammed Ashi takes to the skies. Financial Times. (Financial Times)
Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. (2024, January 25). Ashi Studio—Mohammed Ashi. (FHCM)
Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. (2026, January 29). Something old, something new at Ashi Studio. (FHCM)
Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. (n.d.). Ashi Studio. (FHCM)
Prince Mohammed Bin Salman College of Business and Entrepreneurship. (2023). Ashi Studio: The first Saudi-led couture studio [Case study]. (MBSC College)
Riyadh Air. (2024, May 30). Riyadh Air chooses creative director Ashi as its cabin crew fashion designer. (Riyadh Air)
Taylor, E. (2023, July 6). Ashi Studio becomes the first Gulf designer to show at Paris Haute Couture Week. Vogue. (Vogue)
Vanity Fair. (2026, May). Emily Blunt discusses her 2026 Met Gala look. (Vanity Fair)
The New Yorker. (2026, May 5). The 2026 Met Gala: Bezoses, Beyoncé, and blood. (The New Yorker)
Page Six. (2026, May 5). Emily Blunt’s pearl-and-diamond Met Gala necklace is worth half a million dollars. (Page Six)
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